Making a Moment - Central Park in a Snow Storm by Martynas Katauskas

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In our article series, Making a Moment, we’re asking photographers to share one of their favorite photos that they’ve taken. We want to know the story behind the final image and everything that went into making it.

This time we’re talking to Martynas Katauskas (@duffman), a long-time Lomographer whose analogue journey began 13 years ago when he received a Diana F+ for Christmas and joined our online community soon after.

Martynas has travelled a lot in the intervening years, in part led by his passion for film photography. He has studied photojournalism & documentary photography in Hannover, spent a year volunteering in NYC, took an internship in a darkroom in Berlin, worked for a newspaper in Bremen and in a photo studio in his home country Lithuania. Three months ago he made another move, this time to Byron Bay in Australia.

Today Martynas shares one of his most loved photos, taken almost exactly nine years ago, and tells us why it is still special to him.

Credits: duffman

Martynas: I love this photo, not only because it is my most liked and known here on Lomography! It brings so many good memories back from my year 2015-2016 spent in NYC. It was truly the best year of my life so far and the blizzard experience was one of the most memorable ones.

The photo was taken with a Canon eos3 and a 50mm 1.8 lens on an expired Kodak Ultramax 800. One late January morning I woke up and quickly noticed that something was off. It was really quiet. No car sounds. . . nothing. That is never the case when you live a block away from Times Square. I opened up my curtains and couldn't believe it. Outside was at least a 30cm layer of snow and it was still blasting heavily. This was the first snow of the season. Full of excitement I left home 15 minutes later to explore and shoot this magical urban jungle.

The blizzard was really intense so I didn't last long and had to go back to warm up and rest. But later on I went out again and this time I decided to go to Central Park where I saw this scene on the main promenade. Just walking around was already quite difficult because of the heavy wind and snow. My hands were freezing which made operating the camera also very difficult. I had to hide the camera under my jacket and just take it out for a photo because the lens would get full of snow in under a minute.

I was walking around alone when I saw this man in front of me. I took just one shot of it and luckily it worked out. In my opinion the grainy look of the expired film compliments the vibe quite well.


Thank you to Martynas for sharing this moment with us! To see more of his photography be sure to follow him at his LomoHome and Instagram.

Check out our previous Making a Moment articles! Interested in being featured? Email alex.gray@lomography.com with the subject line - Making a Moment.

written by alexgray on 2025-01-12 #people #making-a-moment #winter #expired-film #community #making-a-moment

4 Comments

  1. polaroidlove
    polaroidlove ·

    Beautiful photo!

  2. lomodesbro
    lomodesbro ·

    banger

  3. duffman
    duffman ·

    thank you! @Alexgray

  4. newyorkalbertan
    newyorkalbertan ·

    I have a roll of expired Ultramax 800, though I have no idea when it expired. But I'm now inspired!!

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